A blog about dancing through cancer treatment

Bad news….and a silver lining?

In the end, I won’t have a chemo treatment this week, but will continue next week with my final 3 treatments, meaning I won’t finish chemotherapy until July 17th and all my proceeding treatments will also be delayed by a week (I have radiation and another surgery to go).

The side effects reached a point of intolerance, although it turns out my side effects are not so much from the chemo drug as from the steroids they give me to counter the side effects of the chemo drug. Bit of irony there. It turns out I am hyper-sensitive to the steroids. So July 3rd we will continue with chemo with a very tiny dose of steroids. Less steroid unfortunately means I will probably have more side effects from the chemo drug but they are more manageable than the insomnia, weight gain (I gained 10 lbs in 3 weeks–yikes!), stomach issues, and muscle weakness the steroids seem to be causing, insomnia being the biggest one. Chemo makes you tired as it is–you don’t need steroids making it impossible to sleep on top of it. I have a week of rest ahead of me, and this is the second time I have had a delay (the first time I had a bad chest infection that landed me in the hospital). 24 weeks are now 26.

But there is a small silver lining, if you can call it that.

Because I am not having a treatment tomorrow, I am guaranteed to be strong enough to do the performance of the open cha cha on Saturday. I will only get stronger from here until my next treatment on July 3rd.

I had a great lesson tonight. The ending we worked on yesterday managed to gel overnight and tonight we were able to run through the routine from top to bottom 5 times (no idea where I got the energy for THAT). It’s not all that we would like it to be, because we had to compensate for my health a little, but it is still a pretty strong routine and it should come across well. I am looking forward to performing it, and have nothing to do but rest until then.

Connection seems to have clicked for me, and I hope it is the same when there is an audience. I am allowing myself to enjoy the performance part of the dance, which is something a little new for me. It has also led me to think a bit about the student-instructor relationship, or at least the one I have with my instructor, as every pro/am relationship is different. I will share my thoughts on that tomorrow as it might help explain some things.

For now, I have allowed myself to be disappointed with the delay, but found the possible silver lining to it, and I will rest until Saturday when I hope all will go smoothly.